What Adventist Health Is Doing to Increase Opioid Safety

In the last decade, health systems across the country have become increasingly aware of the need to manage pain without relying solely on opioids. At Adventist Health, we’ve made concerted efforts to shift to a more wholistic approach to pain management.

Over the last several years, our Opioid Stewardship Committee has assessed best practices, guidelines, national trends, and opioid prescribing at Adventist Health. In response, we’ve developed programs that support opioid safety and a more comprehensive approach to pain management. In 2018, we adopted an Opioid Care Transformation Project that used data to analyze our prescribing patterns and monitor quality measures.

This year, we’ve partnered with CO*RE REMS, a national grant-funded program that brings opioid education and training to our medical providers. This partnership builds upon our goals to keep patients as safe as possible while providing the pain management they need.

Training safe prescribers

CO*RE was founded by ten professional healthcare organizations, including the California Academy of Family Physicians (CAFP). The organization provides continuing education to physicians, nurse practitioners, physician assistants, and other healthcare professionals across the country.

Through our partnership with CO*RE REMS, Adventist Health has identified opioid steward champions throughout our system. These professionals have undergone certification to train other clinicians in the CO*RE REMS safe prescribing curriculum. These champions will deliver trainings in person and through recorded sessions that all clinicians across the organization will attend.

“Not only will this training help clinicians with best practices in pain management, but it will also help us maintain compliance with our medical boards,” said Raul Ayala, MD, family medicine physician and current president of CAFP. “Every clinician is expected to have eight hours of opioid training on safe prescribing. After training, all Adventist Health medical providers will be certified as safe prescribers.”

Wholistic pain management

The CO*RE REMS curriculum helps clinicians understand the physiology of pain and offers multiple pain management methods, including both medication-based and non-medication-based strategies. The comprehensive program also helps providers understand how to recognize substance use disorders and how to help patients.

“When patients think about pain, they often only think about pain medication,” said Dr. Ayala. “But making a proper assessment and a wholistic treatment plan opens up a range of other options. Strategies like physical therapy, occupational therapy, strength training, optimizing your nutrition, massage, or even water therapy can all be effective.” Properly diagnosing and managing other underlying health conditions, including mental health disorders, is also important.

If you deal with chronic pain or have been prescribed an opioid, talk with your provider about other treatment options. There may be alternatives that can bring effective pain relief.

By Kalyn Long

La Sierra to Launch 10 New Academic Programs This Fall

Moving forward into the next school year, La Sierra University will add at least 10 new academic degree programs to its offerings, three of them in the burgeoning sustainability arena.

This fall, La Sierra will roll out Bachelor of Science degrees in urban plant agriculture and sustainable agriculture entrepreneurship; Bachelor of Arts degrees in sustainability and society, political science, theology, and in four STEM education programs; and a Master of Arts in Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA).

Toward moving the university into the expanding sustainability field, La Sierra in 2022 began developing a sustainability park—complete with an off-grid experimental geodesic dome, greenhouse, and two environmentally controlled and technologically outfitted shipping containers for Controlled Environment Agriculture (CEA) developed by Freight Farms urban farming company.

The park’s operations and environmental goals will be supported by the installation this summer of an off-grid solar power system that will be used to power the temperature control in the experimental geodesic dome. The $3,000 system was jointly gifted to the university by the senior classes of 2022 and 2023.

The expansion into the environmental sustainability arena “blends so well with our mission to be stewards of the gifts God has given us while meeting the needs of employers and of students in establishing career pathways,” said La Sierra University Provost April Summitt.

The university will also add four Bachelor of Arts degree programs in STEM education with concentrations in biology, chemistry, physics, and health science. The programs are designed for students who seek to teach in grades 6-12 in California or at a Seventh-day Adventist school.

The new Bachelor of Arts in political science degree will be offered through the university’s Department of History, Politics & Sociology. It is designed for students interested in law, government, politics, and journalism. The H.M.S. Richards Divinity School will also offer a new Bachelor of Arts in theology degree.

Meanwhile, La Sierra’s School of Education is expanding its behavior analyst offerings with a master’s degree program that is fully accredited by the Association for Behavior Analysis International for a Board Certified Behavior Analyst license.

“It is designed to train behavioral analysts who will work with children and people with spectrum disorders, severe emotional disorders, and other behavioral disorders,” said school dean Chang-ho Ji. “We have been running a fully accredited ABA program for about six or seven years, but it was repackaged into an M.A. in ABA based on the new ABA standards. It is one of few face-to-face ABA programs in California.”

By Darla Martin Tucker